


The Most Dangerous Of Our Vices

by girl_wonder



Category: Blade (Movie Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl_wonder/pseuds/girl_wonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was a Nightstalker, he was a vampire, and before that he was someone else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Dangerous Of Our Vices

**Author's Note:**

> Written for scarletts_awry

 

 

Before he met Asher and Danica, he was addicted to heroin, and before heroin it was coke, and before coke it was cigarettes, and before cigarettes it was Anne.

At least, he thought her name was Anne, but since Anne gave him cigarettes and then coke and then heroin, it was hard to remember because sometimes she was someone else. She was Jane to her dealers, and later she was Sugar to her johns.

So, to go back far enough, Hannibal thought that the whole mess with Danica and Asher and a scar near his groin started with Anne.

Anne, she of the blonde hair and gateway addictions. Anne who, high as a kite, sold her blood to someone in a backroom and then said, "'bal, meet my friend, Asher."

Hannibal had been about to try some E, just to mix it up, and had smiled lazy and true when he met Asher. The guy was good looking in his suit, his hair spiked and bleached. On someone else, it would have looked like some middle aged freak trying to feel young again, someone with an ex-wife and a high school daughter whose friends he wanted to sleep with.

But Asher smirked and looked Hannibal up and down, his eyes sharp and assessing. He looked like a predator. He looked like a shark.

"C'mon," Asher said, and didn't reach out for Hannibal's hand or anything, just tilted his head lazily, indicating the back of the club.

Heroin made Hannibal feel like he was on top of the world, like he could do anything, right up until the point that he felt like he couldn't. When Asher had made that slow gesture, Hannibal had felt like Asher was moving at his speed, like Asher felt the same resistance to movement.

Inertia. That feeling right after you got into your high. The resistance of objects to motion. The resistance of Hannibal to change.

Thirty hours later, Hannibal would realize that Asher moved that slow because he always wanted to move too fast, because he didn't know how fast humans moved so when he was playing human he always moved a shade too slow.

It was like watching an undercover cop try to break into the scene. Hannibal had seen that movie too many times: the guy is just off enough that he gets made and gets dead. Except Hannibal had just done some H and was _flying_ and wouldn't notice it if Officer Krupke himself tried to nail him.

*****

He lost time. But, at that point, he was an addict and sometimes he'd loose months and not notice. Six hours was petty change.

Restart the stopwatch at zero, and you hadn't missed anything.

*****

When he woke up, he was in a bedroom. The sheets were silk or something equally soft, and the lights were off. He could see that outside the window it was daylight, but it had to be some serious tinting on the window because inside the room it was dark, dark, like night.

Closing his eyes, Hannibal did the check he always did, hands skimming his body. Ten fingers, ten toes, no clothes, no chance of H until he got some cash. No Anne. Something drying sticky on his abdomen.

At first he thought it was come and that would have been nice because that meant that Asher with the nice suit and the expensive car might be able to get him some H. He slept with a lot of rich men to pay for his extravagant lifestyle.

He laughed and looked down, blinking suddenly because it wasn't come, it was blood flaking off near his hip bone.

"Huh," he said, prodding the wound, but it didn't give up any more red liquid. "I'm not high enough for this."

"You brought home an _addict_?" Danica had been loud enough that he winced away from the echo. He added _hungover_ to his state of being assessment.

"Come meet him." Hannibal reacted to the voice like it was a hit, like he'd just gotten most top grade dope on the market.

She'd come in the room then and Asher, wearing a different suit, had come up behind her, arm wrapped around her waist with his hand lingering on her hip.

"See?"

"I'm Danica," she'd said, all business.

And just like that, Hannibal was owned.

*****

Addiction was about accoutrements. It was about structure and a strict ritual that any Catholic priest could respect.

His addiction to heroin went like this:

Spoon, small waxed envelope with H, lighter, cotton ball, needle, leather belt.

The waxed envelope and the measurements into the spoon had to be done exactly, the lighter had to be there for a certain amount of time, the cotton ball was for safety, the needle was a necessary evil and the leather belt was because he could pull it tight with his teeth while he slid the needle into his skin.

His addiction to Danica went like this:

Bed, her nails, high heels, Asher, her teeth, blood.

A lot of times it would start with sex. Sometimes it even started with good sex. Sometimes, she'd put out her cigarettes on his chest. Sometimes she'd tell Asher to fuck him. Sometimes that was pretty good, too.

Her teeth were the trigger and by the time his blood was already leaving his body, he was high as a kite. The needle was smaller, but her teeth gave him the better high.

*****

Of course, he was still an addict and detoxing was impossible, so they gave him H, Asher sliding the needle into his arm and watching it hungrily.

Danica ignored that part of the arrangement. When she walked, you could hear her coming, the high heels making snapping noises on the ground. Where she walked, she ruled, and maybe that's why she hated the shots. If she was his wife, H was his mistress and he would let Asher do him without lube if it got him a hit of H.

In the end, Hannibal was pretty sure it was jealousy that made her turn him.

*****

"Last call, Hannibal," Asher said. He grinned, manic, and nipped lightly at Hannibal's shoulder. The paraphernalia for a hit was on the bedside table.

"Last call?" Hannibal asked, eyes blinking awake.

The dance was familiar, Asher sniffing the crook of Hannibal's elbow, then biting down and drinking until his eye lashes fluttered. Hannibal knew he was getting hard in anticipation. The needle was already prepared and Hannibal sometimes missed preparing his own hit, but when Asher pulled the leather tight and slid the needle home, it was better than good, it was the best.

"Drink it up," Asher said, grinning. "When you wake up, it'll all be different."

Hannibal had always thought that Asher was just a soap star yearning for his own prime time drama.

*****

When he woke up, he could her Danica breathing outside his room. He could hear a dog's feet walking two stories down, he could _feel_ someone's heartbeat in the next room.

It was a rush.

"How long have I been out?" he asked Asher.

"Couple of days," Asher said. He straightened his tie. "You know what you are?"

"Hard to miss the teeth," Hannibal said. "Nothing matches extended canines like pasty pale skin and a craving for O pos."

He ran a hand down his torso and said, "Guess we won't be having any more slumber parties, huh?"

Hunger rotted in his belly, insatiable and dark.

****

He was wrong.

Danica liked to watch him eat, liked to drink blood from his mouth like Anne used to take smoke from his lips.

They would sit in the room he'd learned was only used for her whores and her sexual escapades and drink from some poor sap who was stupid enough to get picked up by Danica freakin' Talos.

Asher liked to watch and would just do that until Hannibal would call him a pervert.

"Oh, are you having a little trouble with the equipment? You know they have pills for that, now. Red, green, blue, like M & Ms."

Asher still liked to bite him.

*****

When he was drinking out of some chick, some girl who was thick enough to have some meat on her, some blood in her veins, he didn't miss heroin at all. He didn't miss the needles and the lighter and the spoon.

He didn't even miss the high, not even a little.

The taste of blood was salty and necessary the way that breathing was. It was like being addicted to air, but ten times better.

Because, with the teeth came the hunting.

*****

He whistled, a low up-down sound that he used to call his dog with.

"Here dinner, dinner, dinner."

With the crowbar he'd picked up from the back of Danica's car, he slapped the side of a dumpster, listening to the loud clang. In the alley, someone jumped a little and then tucked tighter.

" _Di_ ner. Here, girl."

Her mistake was breathing, because even in the complete darkness from where Danica had shot out the streetlight, he could still hear dinner breathing. The ground was slick from rain, a puddle splashing as he stepped through it.

The girl was bleeding where her teeth cut into her lip and he could smell it on her.

"Boo!"

She screamed when he dragged her back to the limo by her hair, wrapping it around his fingers. Her perfume was flowery, like dead roses and he could appreciate wearing dead things on your skin.

Danica was straddling Asher's lap, her shotgun propped against her thigh and she barely looked up when Hannibal presented his offering.

Dinner was crying now, big tear drops that smelled saltier than blood.

"I see you've replaced your dildo with a gun," Hannibal said, gagging the girl with a ball gag he found in Danica's handbag. "Watch out, Asher, she'll shoot your dick off!"

He laughed at himself and tried to remember the last time he'd seen a _Christmas Story_.

*****

He found Anne in the back of a club, and she looked better and worse at the same time. Her clothes were more expensive and the look in her eye was desperate. Casually, she slid her arm through her date's and pulled his wallet out before he noticed.

Asher leaned his chin on Hannibal's shoulder and said, "Girl trouble?"

"Well, in between you and Danica, I have all the pussy I need, but thanks for offering."

After a year, he should have known better than to tempt Asher, who'd been a vampire almost as long as Hannibal had been alive.

Later, when Danica was pressing him towards the bedroom, her hands everywhere, he smelled someone unfamiliar and said, "Dinner?"

Anne was tied down, eyes wide, body stripped naked and spread out.

"Asher, you shouldn't have. It's not even my birthday." But his words came out rote, they came out forced, and he said, "I'm not hungry."

"Eat," Danica sounded like that with everyone, with all of the people she slept with and with all of the people she wrapped around her little finger. She sounded like that with her familiars. It wasn't the first time Hannibal had reacted to that tone.

He ate.

It felt like the first hit of H. It made him want to die.

*****

Abigail was a surprise. A pleasant one.

He knew she'd do him quick, knew she'd be an efficient means of decapitation.

She paused, her bow a half an inch from his chest. No one could miss at that range.

"You're not fighting," she said.

"Yeah, it's actually our union required holiday. I'm not allowed to fight on Thursdays and alternate Tuesdays."

"It's a Wednesday," she said, stepping back. She removed something else from her bag, a different gun and he wondered if he'd be the test subject for a new weapon.

"Wow. Really? Have to talk to my rep about it, then."

She shot him point blank and when he woke up, he was chained up in a hospital, being pumped full of the anti-virus.

*****

Abigail came to talk to him when he was in the worst sort of withdraw, when his body was changing its chemistry again and he couldn't stand it, couldn't breathe.

"What's she planning?" Abigail slapped him and it felt so good to have human hands on him that he snapped at her fingers.

"I don't know! Dracula. Something to do with Drake."

He whimpered, his skin felt raw.

"I went to your apartment," she said. "Found all that stuff you had stored under your floor. Boss know you're a klepto?"

"Danica can fuck herself on my blood-deprived dick," he said. He meant it.

She turned on a UV lamp and he winced, trying to pull his cuffed hands away, but he didn't burn, not even a little.

"Why weren't you fighting?" she asked.

"I wanted out and my contract is an exclusive 'till death do you part."

He closed his eyes and turned his face away from the light, unable to relax until she'd flipped the light off.

Later, he'd realize that she believed him. At the time, he hadn't even believed himself.

*****

The first vampire he killed, Abigail was waiting behind him, her bow drawn, ready to kill him if he made a mistake.

He didn't.

A few years later, he'd meet up with Blade and think, _you have no idea the things that vampires do behind closed doors_.

He'd be right about that.

*****

end

 


End file.
